More info here and here. Note that the exhibit featured Arnold Friberg’s painting of Washington praying in the snow at Valley Forge. Since it’s doubtful the incident in the painting ever happened, it’s highly fitting that David Barton helped select the items to be displayed.

Perhaps I’m too sensitive, but something about the headline “Pennsylvania’s newest casino opens at Valley Forge” doesn’t sit well with me. “Casino” and “Valley Forge” are two terms that don’t belong together, sort of like “clown act” and “funeral,” or “Snickers bar” and “roast duck.”

Security guards stationed at the edge of the casino floor watched as Ingrid Walker, 69, of Linwood, Delaware County, slid her access card into an electronic gateway. A green arrow lit to admit her, and Walker, who bought an annual membership at the casino resort, made her way in.

“I think it’s good,” she said of the access restrictions. “It keeps the riffraff out.”

Valley Forge Casino Resort uses a silver “V” logo in ads and on billboards dotting the Pennsylvania Turnpike, I-76, and I-95. There’s also a “V” sculpture at its entrance at 1160 First Ave. Management says the logo stands for “victory” – what gamblers aim to achieve at its slots and table games – but it’s also partly a nod to the historic location.

Historical accounts say Gen. Washington, with the aid of Prussian military officer Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben, unified and standardized the Continental Army when it camped at Valley Forge from December 1777 to June 1778. Their preparation led to the capture of Hessian and British troops at the Battle of Trenton, considered a turning point in the American Revolution.

The Battle of Trenton took place a full year before the winter at Valley Forge, of course, so the Americans evidently managed to get twelve months’ worth of extra fighting experience and then go back in time to use it against their enemies. No wonder the Hessians were surprised.

“Roads?” Washington reportedly said to his troops as they prepared to cross the Delaware. “Where we’re going, we don’t need roads.”

About two weeks ago we looked at a press release touting an effort to celebrate LGBT history in various publications. I found it striking for the number of unsubstantiated assertions it contained.

Now, from the dark recesses of a Google News feed, comes Victoria Brownworth’s creation of a surprisingly gay-friendly George Washington. Personally, I’m not buying it, because I think she jumps to some unwarranted conclusions, but since it’s an interesting foray into historical matters I thought we might analyze it in some detail.

Washington’s letters state that he was less than thrilled with marital life (“not much fire between the sheets”) and preferred the company of men — particularly the young Alexander Hamilton, who he made his personal secretary — to that of women, as his letters attest. His concern for his male colleagues clearly extended to their personal lives. This was especially true of Hamilton, who he brought with him to Valley Forge, giving Hamilton a cabin to share with his then-lover, John Laurens, to whom Hamilton had written passionate love letters which are still extant.

First of all, if dissatisfaction with married life and a preference for hanging out with the fellas means you’re tolerant of gays, then I think we can safely say that 99.999% of American men are homophobia-free.

As for the stuff about Hamilton and Laurens, it’s hard for me to take it too seriously. It’s true that Hamilton and Laurens were very close, and that Hamilton’s letters to Laurens are incredibly affectionate and emotional. Ron Chernow briefly discussed the intense and intimate nature of their correspondence in his biography of Hamilton. But to state that Hamilton and Laurens were “lovers” is to commit the same historical fallacy that we saw in the article about Baron von Steuben. The writer takes what is at best a dubious bit of theorizing and presents it as an outright fact.

Alexander Hamilton depicted as a young officer of the Continental Army. Painting by Alonzo Chappel, via Wikimedia Commons

For the life of me, I can’t understand why so many observers are unable to get their heads around the fact that in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, intimate friends of the same sex would express intense emotions in their correspondence without having an actual romantic relationship. It goes back to a point I keep laboring over and over—namely, that people who lived a long time ago were different from us. For Hamilton to write Laurens that he wanted “to convince you that I love you,” as he put it on one occasion, didn’t necessarily have the same connotations that it has for us today. In fact, the Marquis de Lafayette referred to Hamilton as a “man whom I love very much and about whom I have occasionally spoken to you” in a letter to his own wife. If these terms of affection denoted a sexual attraction, why in the world were these guys writing to their wives about it? (“Guess what, honey? I’ve got the hots for another man! I knew you’d be happy for me.”)

Even more damning is the indisputable fact that Hamilton was an accomplished skirt-chaser. It was precisely his inability to stay out of the undergarments of other men’s wives that got him into such trouble later in life, when the husband of his mistress blackmailed him and the whole thing blew up in public.

Hamilton also enjoyed an affectionate marriage. Although he slept around behind his wife’s back, the two were close, and he managed to get her knocked up no less than eight times. If Hamilton had a thing for guys, he apparently got over it. (Laurens got married in England and fathered a child, but he sailed for America not long after the wedding and then died in the war without getting the chance to see his daughter.)

Moving on:

Renowned gay historian Randy Shilts makes the case for Washington’s ever-pragmatic as well as compassionate approach to same-sex relationships in Conduct Unbecoming: Gays and Lesbians in the U.S. Military.

Shilts details how Washington merely signed the order for discharge of a soldier caught in flagrante with another soldier, and suggests that if Lt. Col. Aaron Burr had not forced the issue, the soldier might have remained at Valley Forge instead of being the first documented case of a discharge for homosexuality in the Continental Army on March 15, 1778 at Valley Forge.

The soldier was court-martialed by Burr, but that was the extent of it. Washington did not flog him, imprison him or as Jefferson had required as part of Virginia law as punishment for sodomy, have him castrated. Washington could also have had the soldier executed. He did none of these things. The soldier just walked away.

He didn’t exactly “just walk away,” though; he got drummed out of camp, which is not at all the same as a simple discharge. This was a humiliating punishment in which the condemned was publicly marched out to music, formally stripped of rank, and exiled from the camp. In an age when gentlemen jealously guarded their honor and reputations, this was no small matter. Brownworth goes on to describe the ritual of drumming out, but doesn’t seem to understand its significance.

Randy Shilts did indeed discuss the Enslin case in Conduct Unbecoming, but he was far more cautious in drawing conclusions from it than Brownworth indicates. Here’s an excerpt from his book:

Some observers have suggested that Enslin’s sentence is evidence that Washington held a lenient view of homosexuality, since such transgression could have been punishable by imprisonment or even death in the conventions of the day. (Thomas Jefferson demonstrated his liberalism by proposing a year earlier that sodomy be punished by castration instead of death in the new penal code that would replace Virginia’s Colonial charter.) This, however, remains speculation. [Emphasis added.]

Brownworth’s contention that Washington would’ve let the whole thing slide had not Burr “forced the issue” is also rather specious. Signing off on the sentence was about all that Washington, as commanding general of the army, would be expected to do. I don’t think there’s any reason to assume that an officer of Washington’s rank would personally preside over an inquiry into a mere lieutenant’s sexual misconduct. If anything, Washington seems to have enthusiastically supported Enslin’s expulsion. His general orders for March 14, 1778 betray not the slightest hint of reluctance:

His Excellency the Commander in Chief approves the sentence and with Abhorrence and Detestation of such Infamous Crimes orders Lieutt. Enslin to be drummed out of Camp tomorrow morning by all the Drummers and Fifers in the Army never to return; The Drummers and Fifers to attend on the Grand Parade at Guard mounting for that Purpose.

Brownworth also suggests that “Washington signed the order for discharge more because the case involved fraternization below rank.” I wish she’d included some sort of citation for this statement, because I don’t see anything to substantiate it. The court-martial convicted Enslin of sodomy and perjury, not fraternization. The general orders quoted above make no mention of fraternization, and neither did Shilts in Conduct Unbecoming, at least as far as I could find.

Trotting out the rumors of Baron von Steuben’s homosexual dalliances and assuming that they were true, Brownworth then claims that the drillmaster, his assistant, Hamilton, and Laurens all constituted, in her words, “a gay foursome working directly with the leader of the Continental Army.”

Washington obviously considered morale in what was inarguably the most horrific battle station in U.S. military history, the winter at Valley Forge, needed to be upheld. Allowing men their one solace — each other — made sense from a general’s point of view. The less miserable the soldiers, the better they would fight. If keeping each other warm in the bone-crushing cold and abject misery (2,500 soldiers died at Valley Forge from starvation, disease and exposure) made life somewhat more bearable, then Washington had no issue with ignoring homosexuality in his ranks.

I repeat here what I stated with regard to the press release we examined two weeks ago: This whole thing is eerily reminiscent of the sort of historical shenanigans we’ve come to expect from Christian Nationalist writers. We get poorly-substantiated inferences presented as rock-solid facts, quotes taken out of their proper historical contexts, and elaborate reconstructions of prominent figures’ beliefs and attitudes based on the most precarious foundations. Still, I’ve got to admit that the idea of Washington willingly looking the other way while four members of his inner circle shacked up at Valley Forge sounds like an awesome premise for a sitcom.

The other day I was sitting in Pizza Hut with a friend of mine, enjoying a plate of boneless chicken wings, when I looked up at the TV mounted on the wall to find Glenn Beck talking about George Washington.

Beck’s new favorite book is George Washington’s Sacred Fire, by Peter Lillback. He’s been bragging that its sales have skyrocketed because of his endorsement, and evidently he’s right. As of my writing this, it’s ranked no. 1 on Amazon. I haven’t read the book, but as far as I can determine (and if anybody knows differently feel free to correct me), Lillback is trying to make the case that Washington was a more orthodox Christian than a lot of us believe. Personally, I think Washington was well along the deism end of the spectrum, though not as far as some of his contemporaries.

While I was looking for information about the book, I found out that Beck has been on a real Washington kick lately. On May 7, his guests were Andrew Allison and Earl Taylor. Allison is co-author of The Real George Washington; Taylor is president of the National Center for Constitutional Studies, the organization that published Allison’s book. Beck has been encouraging people to read that one, too, but based on the transcript of his interview with these guys, I think I’ll have to pass. Here’s a sample:

BECK: Yes, and [Washington] was trusted on making treaties. And people, they did. They trusted him. Tell me the story of — I’m trying to remember the name of the Indian that came up and made the George Washington prophecy. A, is it true? Tell me the story and then, is it true?

TAYLOR: That is true. This is actually in the French — during the French and Indian War when he in his early 20s was on aide to General Braddock – British General Braddock. And they were leading about almost 1,500 troops out to western Pennsylvania, Fort Duquesne, around Pittsburgh now. And Washington had warned — because Washington knew the area and he had warned Braddock that there are places that are real good ambush sites, I wouldn’t go there.

Washington at Braddock's defeat on the Monongahela, from the Library of Congress (LC-DIG-pga-02418)

Well, General Braddock, he was a — he was a British general. And, you know, they’re — most of them are quite proud. And they know it. So they march right into — through this area. And almost 1,000, I guess the number is 700 French troops with Indians ambushed them and just started mowing them down. And out of the almost 1,500 that they started with, there was over 1,000 deaths and wounded. And among those were all of the officers including Braddock, except George Washington. And he wrote the next day to his family, he said, ‘I don’t know why I’m still here. It must be the hand of Providence that had preserved me. I’ve got bullet holes in my hat, through my clothing. I’ve had two horses shot out from under me.’

BECK: He was never wounded ever, was he?

TAYLOR: No. Not in battle.

BECK: And he — and the troops talked about bullet holes through his clothing and he was on a white horse.

TAYLOR: Oh, yes.

BECK: It would be like camouflage!

(LAUGHTER)

BECK: Camouflage your horse!

TAYLOR: Well, 15 years later, Washington — this was in 1770, Washington was with a group of men that were reviewing and kind of scoping out the same area. And an old Indian was part of an Indian band that discovered them and invited them to sit down in the council, around the council fire. And this old Indian chief gets up and he said, ‘I was there. As a matter of fact, I was in command when the Indians and the French drenched this area with the blood of the soldiers. And we killed a lot of them. But we could not kill that man.’ He said, ‘I had moved my best marksmen on him and I told them they cannot miss and they usually did not miss.’ ‘But this time,’ he said, ‘we couldn’t hit him.’

BECK: And is this the same Indian that said, you will be a great leader of…

TAYLOR: Yes. And that was his — that was his prophecy. He said, ‘I’m telling you, the great spirit is with that man. He will one day be the great chief of a great nation.’

ALLISON: Preside over an empire.

TAYLOR: ‘He cannot die — he cannot die in battle.’

Washington did indeed escape from Braddock’s defeat without a scratch, which is remarkable enough, but if the part about the prophecy sounds more like drama than history, it’s because that’s probably all it is. Washington’s step-grandson George Washington Parke Custis wrote a play about the incident in 1828, claiming that he got the story from Dr. James Craik, a physician who was at Braddock’s defeat and on the 1770 surveying expedition. (He was also, incidentally, one of the attending physicians at Washington’s death.)

Years later, the tale turned up again in Custis’s Recollections and Private Memoirs of Washington, where he again attributed it to Craik but admitted in a footnote that Washington made no mention of the incident in his diary. Interestingly enough, the same footnote mentions a separate meeting with Indians during the same trip that is found in the diary, and for which (unlike the supposed prophecy visit) we have a specific name for the embassy’s leader. I suspect that Craik took this visit, embellished a few details, and turned it into the prophecy story after Washington was dead and elevated to the pantheon of early national heroes, but that’s just me.

This wasn’t the only bit of questionable history Beck and his guests were throwing around. Here’s Beck during the same show:

His country, Britain and then the United States of America, had him serving for year after year after year after year. After he won the Revolutionary War, he went back to be that farmer in Mount Vernon. And things started to fall apart. And they came knocking at his door and said, ‘George, we need you, because the whole thing is falling apart.’ I’m paraphrasing, but I think it was pretty close to — ‘Have I not yet done enough for my country?’ No. He went back and he didn’t say very much during the Continental Congress and the constitutional convention. He didn’t say much. He didn’t have to. He was a revered figure. He was — that’s my favorite painting of him. He was a revered figure. He was a guy — this was actually a painting done on the, just on the words of one of the — I think it was a farmer if I’m not mistaken. A farmer came into the field one day, and heard some noise and heard him standing there, in the field and he just watched him as he got down in Valley Forge on one knee and he prayed all by himself. He’s a guy that in the end could have been made king. He could have been made a ruler. He’s a guy who could have been really upset at Congress. Boy, oh, boy.

The “farmer” was supposedly a Quaker named Potts, who decided after seeing the general in prayer that soldiering wasn’t such a bad gig after all, and became a fervent supporter of the Revolution. That, at least, is the story as it originally appeared in the Washington biography by Parson Weems, who never met an anecdote he didn’t like. Since then it’s appeared in illustrated form so many times that the question of whether or not it actually happened is essentially moot. It probably didn’t. Weems is a notoriously unreliable source, and in 1918 Valley Forge park officials refused to allow the erection of a monument to the event when they were unable to find any evidence to substantiate it.

At one point during his Washington segment, Beck claimed that “it’s ironic to me that we make up a lie about ‘I shall not tell a lie’ on George Washington when there are so many great truth stories with him.” That makes two of us—or maybe one of us. I’m glad he’s urging his audience to study the founders; I just wish he’d do it a little more carefully himself.